Public Develops A Sweet Tooth For Low-cal Sugar Substitutes

June 20, 1985|By Kay Vandervoort of The Sentinel Staff

The demand of America's sweet tooth for non-caloric sweeteners has kept saccharin on the market for eight years against the judgment of the federal Food and Drug Administration. The FDA's position is that the substance can cause cancer and should not be used in food or beverages, except as a tabletop sweetener.

Saccharin has remained an approved food additive because Congress, responding to public protest over the FDA's proposed ban of the substance, placed a moratorium on its prohibition in November 1977. The original two-year moratorium has been extended repeatedly, and Congress recently extended it again.

Studies still are being done to determine the possible ill effects of aspartame, better known under the brand name NutraSweet, but there are no indications that this low-calorie darling of dieters is in danger of being removed from the market.

Meanwhile, carcinogenic data on cyclamate, which has been banned since Sept. 11, 1970, is under review by the FDA, and this substance could be on its way to reinstatement as a safe sweetening agent.

The new extension, signed by President Reagan, will permit saccharin to stay on the market another two years, until May 1, l987, an FDA spokesman said on Tuesday.

At levels normally consumed by humans, all three artificial sweeteners are regarded as safe by the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), a national consumer education association that is directed by a panel of scientists.

Saccharin, the granddaddy of the big three artificial sweeteners, has been consumed by Americans for more than 100 years. Made from petroleum-based materials by the Sherwin-Williams Co., it has no calories yet is 300 times sweeter than sugar. Almost all of the substance is excreted by the body unchanged.

Saccharin was unsuccessfully attacked as an adulterant as early as 1911. Its safety began to be questioned seriously about the time the FDA initiated a review of hundreds of food additives on its GRAS -- generally recognized as safe -- list in the early 1970s. Substances on the list are not subject to the application of the 1958 Delaney Clause, an amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The clause, which provides that no new food additive can be used if animal feeding studies or other appropriate tests showed that it caused cancer, requires pre-marketing proof of safety. Saccharin and cyclamate were in use and generally regarded as safe before the Delaney Clause was enacted and therefore were on the GRAS list.

Following studies that indicated saccharin had cancer-causing potential, the FDA took the sweetener off the GRAS list in 1972, thereby making it subject to the Delaney Clause. Further studies by the FDA and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation found significant incidence of bladder tumors in rats fed saccharin since weaning. A subsequent study in Canada reinforced this result, and the FDA moved to ban saccharin as a food additive. That aroused public clamor, leading to the Congressional moratorium contained in the Saccharin Study and Labeling Act. The act also provided that products containing saccharin bear cancer warning labels.

Subsequent studies by the National Academy of Sciences concluded that saccharin is a low-potency carcinogen in animals, that it is a potential cancer-causing agent in humans, and that it seems to promote the cancer- causing properties of carcinogenic agents consumed with it.

ACSH argues that saccharin ''is actually the weakest carcinogen ever detected in an animal test, in terms of the amount needed to produce tumors.'' Less than two weeks ago, the National Academy of Sciences, which reviewed the cancer-causing data on cyclamate for the FDA, determined the evidence supports a conclusion that cyclamate is not a carcinogen. But it possibly might be a ''cancer promoter,'' meaning that it could accelerate the cancer potential of other substances, the academy's June 10 report said.

The review was undertaken after Abbott Laboratories, the manufacturer of cyclamate, made repeated appeals for permission to remarket the sweetener.

The academy's report will be evaluated by the FDA, which probably will make a decision on the status of cyclamate sometime next year, said FDA spokesman Jim Greene. Besides the cancer issue, Greene said, questions about whether cyclamate can cause genetic damage and testicular atrophy also have to be resolved.

Cyclamate was introduced as a food additive in the 1950s. In 1969, after bladder tumors developed in rats fed a mixture of saccharin and cyclamate, the FDA proposed to phase cyclamate out of general food use. The total ban came after a medical advisory group of the academy recommended that cyclamate not be used even as a drug under medical supervision.

Cyclamate, like saccharin, is calorie-free, but only 30 times sweeter than sugar. Unlike saccharin, cyclamate is metabolized by the body, and only its byproducts are excreted. Before it was banned, cyclamate had been marketed as a tabletop sweetener under the name Sucaryl.